Gary and Ann Hunsicker didn’t know what to expect when they took their seats at the Lied Center Sunday night to listen to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and student of the presidency, Roger Wilkins.

They got a little bit of everything, the Edgerton couple said afterward.

“He wasn’t flamboyant but he was interesting,” Gary Hunsicker said.

“He gave us a look at things from a black’s perspective,” his wife said. “He told us about the little things you wouldn’t notice.”

Wilkins, a civil rights advocate, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, and a member of administrations under Presidents John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, spoke to about 1,600 people attending the second installment of the Presidential Lecture Series sponsored by the Dole Institute of Politics at Kansas University.

Wilkins wove stories about his own experiences in Washington with his thoughts on presidents he has studied and the characteristics he thinks makes any president great.

The country’s first president was probably its greatest, Wilkins said.

“If I met George Washington today I would be tongue-tied,” Wilkins said.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, civil rights advocate and distinguished professor at George Mason University Roger Wilkins looks over his notes in the green room of the Lied Center. Wilkins, the second speaker of the 2003 Presidential Lecture Series sponsored by the Dole Institute, spoke Sunday in Lawrence.

Washington allowed the country to get its start by holding together a rag-tag army that fought the well-trained British army for six years before defeating it, Wilkins said.

Washington then went on and “invented the presidency for us,” said Wilkins, who has studied presidents as well as worked for them.

Wilkins also talked about the good and the bad sides of Kennedy and Johnson. While many thought Kennedy was “all hair, teeth and glamour,” Wilkins also described him as a physically ailing but determined young man.

Kennedy’s legacy was forged by his handling of the Cold War, civil rights and the economy, said Wilkins, who worked for the U.S. Agency for International Development during the Kennedy administration.

Wilkins commended Kennedy’s handling of the Cuban missile crisis and held up his index finger and thumb to indicate how close the United States came to nuclear war.

As for Johnson, he talked more than he listened and he was frightened of Vietnam, Wilkins said.

“The job was bigger than Johnson,” he said.

Wilkins, who was an assistant attorney general during Johnson’s presidency, described a falling out the two had and how they made up in 1972 shortly before Johnson’s death.

¢ Pulitzer-winning journalist to speak in lecture series (11-6-03)¢Roger Wilkins

At the time, Wilkins was writing editorials for the Washington Post about the Nixon administration’s Watergate scandal and encouraged Johnson to speak out about it.

“I revere George Washington. I honor President Kennedy … and I love Lyndon Johnson,” Wilkins said.

Wilkins’ Watergate editorials earned him the Pulitzer Prize, which he also shared with the Post’s Watergate reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein and cartoonist Herb Block.

After the speech, copies of one of Wilkins’ books, “Jefferson’s Pillow,” were sold in the lobby. Wilkins, currently a professor of history and American culture at George Mason University, sat at a table and signed some of them.

“He moved around a lot (in his topics), but he was a very insightful speaker,” said Leda Sedlock, of Lawrence, who along with her husband, Charlie Sedlock, bought one of the books.

Wilkins